Too bad the political appointees, PC Homeland Security officials and State Department weenies are unlikely to embrace this common sense acknowledgment of the reality of the enemy we fight.

A U.S. military "Red Team" charged with challenging conventional thinking says that words like "jihad" and "Islamist" are needed in discussing 21st-century terrorism and that federal agencies that avoid the words soft-pedaled the link between religious extremism and violent acts.

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"The fact is our enemies cite the source of Islam as the foundation for their global jihad," the report said. "We are left with the responsibility of portraying our enemies in an honest and accurate fashion."

Using the terms in question is simply a matter of intellectual honesty. While one can debate whether or not al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations accurately represent orthodox Islam in their ideology, what cannot be denied is that they claim to base their ideology upon Islam. To refuse to use the terms that they use themselves makes understanding them much more difficult, if not impossible. Those members of the Islamic community who insist that the terms not be used by our government are, whether intentionally or not, hindering the war on terror by cutting off what are fruitful discussions of the motivations of the terrorists themselves. We simply cannot allow ourselves to be held hostage to political correctness.